


hang my head; break my heart; build from all I have torn apart

by alltoowell



Category: Hannibal (TV), alludes to red dragon??, mentions of hannibal rising (i guess?)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-30
Updated: 2014-04-30
Packaged: 2018-01-21 10:25:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,872
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1547306
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alltoowell/pseuds/alltoowell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alana feels stuck, so she ends up going to see Hannibal. </p><p>It's not a cure, and it's not healthy, but it's enough for now. </p><p>(Companion piece of my earlier work: Talking was cheap and your lies were expensive.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	hang my head; break my heart; build from all I have torn apart

**Author's Note:**

> This is sort of a companion piece of 'Talking was cheap and your lies were expensive' but I guess it could be read separately? I wouldn't advise it though. 
> 
> I cannot tell you guys enough how much I appreciate all and any feedback.

It had been a succession of mildly painful incidents which led her here. A long week of hellish reminders and frustration and impatience with the fact everybody else seemed to have pieced their lives back together neatly, while she was still collecting fragments of hers and desperately trying to make them fit.

Logically, she knew this was not the miracle cure she was looking for; the antidote to the traces of pain that had not quite dissolved yet-- but unfortunately, she was also in the current state of mind were logic and judgement and professional perception of herself were all thrown forcibly out the window.

It begun with a simple cream envelope, her name written on it in cursive, the indent of a penmanship she did not recognise. She knew what it was before she opened it; had been delicately ignoring hints in emails from Will for weeks now, had fielded one too many concerned calls from Jack over the course of the last few days-- checking up on her.

Will had been dating Molly for well over a year now. Alana had never spoken to her-- had never had to, luckily-- but she’d heard stories, seen pictures. She was good with the dogs, Will assured her, like that had been her main concern. It seemed Will was a hit with her kid too, if the photos he’d sent her of him and the boy after a successful fishing trip were any kind of indication.

Alana had wanted to call him-- ask him if he was really sure this was what he wanted, if Molly really loved him like he deserved to be loved, if he missed her at all-- but decided against it. The answers to each of her questions could be found in the steady bold of the card’s main inscription: _Molly Foster and Will Graham request the pleasure of your company at their wedding._

Still, that was not why she had come here, although she was well aware this constituted as enabling the habit of snowballing from one man she’d loved to the other; oscillating from rejection to rejection. Unhealthy and illogical as the cycle was, it remained unbroken. Consciously, she knew going to see Hannibal would not erase the wedding invitation on her kitchen table; she knew that calling Will and asking him not to marry Molly would not change the fact she could not hate Hannibal Lecter with the venom that he did, that she could not promise him she would ever be able to.

To be fair, it was not like she had come here entirely of her own violation. There was a case, a reason, a girl whose death Jack was revising with darker eyes than he had when she’d died-- almost five years ago.

Chloe Mendez had been a fourteen year old girl, found in her bed with a neat scar along her chest, a collection of wild violet lilies embedded within her. The cause of death had been a toss between suffocation, after one of her lungs had been removed while the other was sliced open, and the exsanguination which followed. Her lung had been found a half a mile away from her house, wrapped in cling-film. Although her liver had also been taken, they had never recovered it.

Alana had been called in to consult-- there was near certain discussion at the time of Chloe’s seventeen year old step-brother being involved, but the kid had lawyered up the second they’d glanced his way. Jack told her after that it didn’t matter anyway, because there wasn’t enough evidence to warrant an arrest: despite the fact he was a budding medical student known to have had a quite public obsession with the crimes of the Chesapeake Ripper and had experimented on family pets by removing their organs.

It had been the kind of case that made Alana thank God she was not FBI, that she could go back to her patients who trusted her to make everything better and pretend that miscarriages of justice like this happened infrequently.

Jack appeared in her classroom to tell her he was going down to Baltimore to talk to try and tease a confession out of Hannibal. It wasn’t unusual-- he often told her, simply because she suspected he didn’t want to risk her finding out later and being potentially pissed off-- but this time, Alana offered to go instead.

“That’s a terrible idea,” Jack told her frankly, and at the very least he was being honest with her, which was more than they both felt she deserved. “I’ll go, I _always_ go.”

“I want to,” she insisted, crossing her arms. “You said yourself the last time you went he was just messing with you. Maybe a change of face is exactly what it’ll take to make him talk.”

She was completely manipulating Jack’s blind desire to put this case to rest-- Chloe’s step-brother had murdered her, and no other confession would ever be enough to convince Alana differently. She knew Hannibal did not kill this girl: but she also knew that Jack wanted to believe that he did.

“It’s been nearly two years.” Jack narrowed his eyes. “Am I supposed to believe that the fact this is the first time you’ve made any kind of effort to visit him is purely focused on your professional determination to close this case?”

Alana might have laughed out loud at that if she hadn’t still be skating on thin ice. Truthfully, it had been an awful long time since she’d had any kind of ‘professional determination’ -- since she’d learnt better.

“You can believe whatever you want to, Jack,” she said simply, not wanting to argue when the outcome would not alter. “I don’t need your permission.”

His expression tightened and she held her breath. No, she did not need his permission, but she would have appreciated his blessing nonetheless. One less thing for them to disagree about; and she was in the process of rebuilding this bridge because sometimes she looked in Jack’s eyes and recognised a hint of something haunted, for just a flicker of a second, before he remembered to hide it. Sometimes, she could convince herself that his mistakes weighed more than hers.

Alana didn’t feel guilty about it, considering she was sure he did the same; that the only reason he made any move to accept her olive branch was because seeing her reminded him he had not been the blindest person who’d fallen for Hannibal Lecter’s charm; because seeing her offered the kind of comfort that self-doubt did not.

He drove her to the hospital himself, persistently protesting that she was making a mistake, but she chose to ignore him. When he parked the car, Jack glanced in her direction and offered one final time to go in and talk to Hannibal himself.

“I’ll be half an hour at most,” she said, opening the door and getting out. She was about the slam the car door when Jack coughed pointedly, and she raised an eyebrow, a blush settling on her cheeks when she realised he was holding out Chloe Mendez’s case file for her to take. “Um, right.”

“Yeah.” Jack eyed her curiously. “Alana, this is about the case. He likes to toy with people, remember? He’ll try to distract you, to hurt you even. Don’t let him get to you, all right?”

She gave him a tight smile, resisting the urge to snap that she was not the fragile feminine package everybody else had wrapped her into. “I’ll be fine, Jack.”

The new chief of staff, Mr Carson-- a tall man with glasses rested on the tip of his nose and an Armani suit that smelt like dust-- welcomed her in with little questioning. He knew who she was, he informed her as he led her down the hallway she was already unfortunately familiar with. He introduced her to the resident psychiatrist, Dr Anderson, who looked much too young to be so tense and over-emotional. She felt the overwhelming need to ask him if he was okay _._ He answered her hesitantly in a hitching voice that it had a very long morning.

Both Carson and Anderson agreed they were surprised she had taken so long to visit. Their insensitivity did not surprise her, but it was somewhat amusing to watch them tiptoe around the fact they were registering her presence as an ‘FBI related visit’ and not a psychiatric one. She wondered how she was expected to have forgotten her involvement in what had taken place, when they quite obviously could not.

At the end of the corridor, Carson made a left instead of a right. “This won’t be a long visit,” she said, when she realised he was leading her into the room she’d once hypnotised Will in. Her palms were starting to sweat; this felt a lot like deja vu. “I can speak to him from the cells.”

“Actually, he’s been spending some time in the cages this morning.” Carson sounded irritated, when Chilton would have been curious. She wondered what else had changed about the hospital’s runnings. She wondered if it were truly any better.

Before she could ask why Hannibal was being contained in the cages, Dr Anderson chirped up. “We had an... _incident_ , last night, with another inmate.”

Alana clutched the folder a little tighter to her chest. “What kind of incident?”

“Oh, Dr Bloom, it was incredibly upsetting, you see--” Anderson began.

“He threatened to turn a convicted child molester into a pot pie,” Carson interrupted bluntly, typing the code to a door without even covering the pad. “Then suggested he serve it to the man’s victims, so they could violate him similarly.

A smile tugged at the corners of Alana’s lips when it really shouldn’t have. “Oh, dear,” she said, hoping her voice portrayed more sympathy than she actually felt.

“The man cried himself to sleep! He was terribly upset!” Dr Anderson wailed miserably, as Carson held the door open for her, and motioned to the empty table and two chairs.

“You can wait here. The guards should be down with him in just a moment.”

“Thanks.” When neither of them made any move to leave, she nodded towards the door. “You don’t need to stay on my account. This is confidential,” waved the folder branded ‘FBI EVIDENCE’ to illustrate her point.

Anderson practically ran out of the room, but not before shooting her a look. “With all due respect, Ms, um, _Dr_ Bloom, I don’t imagine Lecter will be any more cooperative with you than he is with me.”

With a smile as condescending as his comment, Alana bit back the retort forming: _With all due respect, Dr Anderson, I imagine he will be._

Carson motioned to an array of buttons on the wall. “If you need our assistance…” he murmured, trailing off, and then he followed, somewhat reluctantly, at a distance from his colleague.

Alana sincerely doubted that professional relationship had much shelf life left.

She didn’t have to wait long. Within a few minutes of sitting down, the door was opening again, shocking her to her feet.

She concentrated on the fact Hannibal’s jumpsuit was a darker blue than the angriest ocean, when she’d imagined orange.

He was thrust into the chair in front of her with such force that she flinched. The guard slipped his hands from handcuffs to the metal locks on the table, taking long pauses that Alana categorized as missed opportunities on Hannibal’s part. It would be so easy for him to do damage here, with little to no effort-- they were making it easy; like they wanted an excuse. On a normal day, she imagined he was all to happy to give them one in exchange for a moment of excitement. Today though, he was much too busy watching her over the man’s shoulder.

Alana stared at the ground, refusing to look at him until they were alone. The guards left with the assurance they were just outside if she needed them.

“Dr Bloom,” his voice was still as sweet as she remembered, mingled with his accent, echoing in this empty room. “I must say I am surprised to see you, after all of this time.”

“Yes, well, I’m here on Jack’s behalf.” Only a half-lie, really. She sat back down and very deliberately avoided his dark eyes, although she could feel the heat of them on her skin. She flipped the folder open on the table, displaying photographs of Chloe; her bedroom; her body, cut open in the lab. “Look familiar?”

Hannibal pursed his lips together thoughtfully, never once taking his eyes off of her. “I get the very distinct impression you already know the answer to that.”

“I’d prefer to hear it from you.” A second’s silence, before clarifying, “ _Jack_ would prefer to hear it from you.”

Hannibal raised an eyebrow. “Agent Crawford should have come here himself. I did not think you were in the business of doing his dirty work.”

“This is an exception.” She pushed a photograph of Chloe’s corpse toward him. “I would appreciate it if you would at least look.”

A brief glance down, and Hannibal was tapping his fingers against the table. “Is that truly what you believe to be my modus operandi, or is Agent Crawford simply attempting to pin every failed case on me in the hopes they will stick?”

“It has some hallmarks of the ripper killings. Organs taken. The affiliation with flowers. The neat stitching.”

“I can see that,” Hannibal replied flippantly. His eyes narrowed. “Regardless, I am ever so slightly offended. I would assume you know me better, Dr Bloom, than to think I would harm a girl so young.”

Alana laced her hands together in her lap, and glanced down at the last school photograph of the victim. She saw cold blue eyes instead of Chloe’s vibrant hazel.

“You killed Abigail Hobbs,” she said, words falling out of her mouth without permission. Of all the murders Hannibal had committed, all the psychological torture inflicted, it was that one in particular which she found the most difficult to stomach. Hannibal had sincerely _cared_ for Abigail-- she’d witnessed it herself. They might have disagreed over her course of treatment, but she had never had any kind of reservations about Hannibal’s intentions toward her patient.

Hannibal sat back in his chair as best he could, still staring at her, measured and calculated, sending shivers down her spine. When she looked up, his eyes were sparkling with the spurring of a secret she did not know. “I believe her body has still not been found.”

Alana knew better than to take that bait. “Yes, and I think we both know why.” A thought struck her-- one of the many questions that kept her awake some nights, even now, and although she knew Jack wouldn’t approve, she found herself asking it: “Did you...I mean, did we ever--?”

Her voice shook with the effort of constructing the sentence, but thankfully he saved her from having to finish it. “You’re asking me if I served your patient to you?” He had the audacity to sound disgusted by her implication. “Dr Bloom, I would never be so tasteless.”

She hoped her glare was half as aggressive as she meant it to be. “Of course not.” She nodded towards the photographs on the table. “Am I to take it you deem yourself better than this heinous act too?”

“I do not kill children-- take of that what you will,” Hannibal stared at her for a beat longer, before pushing the photographs back toward her. “I don’t necessarily expect you or Agent Crawford to believe me, of course, but a phone call to our good friend Will ought to confirm.”

“I know you didn’t do it,” Alana said tightly, slipping the photographs back into the folder, trying very carefully to ignore how easily it would be for him to reach out and grab her-- or how easily it would be for her to touch him. “And we don’t consult with Will anymore, actually.” Technically, there was no longer a _we_ either, at least not one she was actively a part of, but that hardly mattered.

“Oh?” this only seemed to surprise Hannibal marginally. She imagined Jack had already been tricked into offering details on his favourite topic of conversation. “Am I to take it he quit?”

“I think he realized that continuing to brush with fire meant that he only had himself to blame when he got burned.”

“Is this with regards to the FBI or you?” Hannibal’s smirk was enough to have her flinching.

She might have had a come back for that if he hadn’t had a very valid point. Once, hearing the truth laid out so frankly might have hurt, but she was long past that point; long past allowing Will to be anything but a dull ache in the bottom of her heart who she missed more than was healthy.  

Alana sat up a little straighter in her chair. “Stop,” she ordered, placing the folder in her lap. “I didn’t come here to discuss Will Graham with you. I just wanted you to confirm what I already knew, because thanks to you, my opinion holds very little merit anymore.”

Bitterness should not have been seeping out of her like this, but she had directed it at just about everybody else except the person who actually might have deserved it, so she didn’t feel the need to apologize.

Hannibal considered her accusation for a moment. “Your greatest flaw was always your childish tendency to offer the purest of affection and trust in abundance with little reason. I warned you myself numerous times that you ought to be more careful.”

“You wanted to punish me for loving too easily?” She demanded, leaning forward, staring into eyes that were taking her in with a hint of amusement.

“It was never my intention to punish you,” he corrected, and she guessed that was the closest to an apology she would ever receive, despite the blatant lack of remorse. “This was not personal-- I have told you before. You are punishing yourself by continuing to believe that it was.”

Perhaps, but thinking he had set out to hurt her made her feel slightly more important than believing he honestly had not thought about her at all.

Moments passed, and they fell into an uncomfortable silence. She mourned the loss of their intimacy, even though she knew she shouldn’t. She missed believing that she knew what he was thinking.

Alana knew this was her chance to leave, but she chose not to take it. There had never been an easy way out before-- why start now?

“I assume you have considered the possibility of a copycat?”

It took her a brief moment to recognise Hannibal was talking about the case.

Alana nodded. “Naturally.”

Hannibal’s smirk was faint. “You were never very good at lying. I do hope you were more articulate than that when they questioned you after my arrest.” He nodded towards the folder of Chloe’s pictures. “Agent Crawford believes it was me, evidently.”

Alana nodded. She wondered why they were all now rendered incapable of distinguishing each other on a first name basis; she wondered why she was the only one with enough of a connection to all parties to be on that slightly higher level of intimacy. She wondered if it made her incredibly pathetic that she could not regard Hannibal Lecter with the detachment he now regarded her with.

“But you do not?” Curious, interested, like perhaps he had finally decided her visit was not futile.

“You didn’t murder Chloe Mendez. You said yourself you didn’t kill children,” she said, crossing her legs.

“I sincerely doubt you took my sole word for it.” Hannibal actually looked a little...disappointed by her faith. He licked his lips; the instigation of a mind-game. “Some of the best meat comes from younger animals, you know.”

She hated that he was doing this, trying to confuse her. He wanted to be in control of how she saw him; just like he had been before, except this time, he didn’t want her to see the charming man who cooked beautiful dishes and kissed like the world was ending. This time, he was a predator in a navy jumpsuit with his hands in shackles they both knew he could break out of it he wanted to enough.

Alana wanted to show him that should play this game too. She lifted her chin a fraction.

“I think that it would be impossible for you to look into the eyes of a child and not see the terror in your sister’s eyes reflected back at you.”

Her words might as well as been bullets. For a splinter of a second, a look of raw hurt passed across Hannibal’s face. Just as quickly as she’d seen it, she felt walls fall into place around him. A barrier, between them, now she had proven to be capable of unpredicted damage.

His lips were set in a fine line; all traces of teasing gone. “It would be wise of you not to make that connection again, Dr Bloom.” A warning; a threat.

It felt downright ridiculous, to hear him speak to her so distantly while he sat a few feet away. It was outrageous that he was talking with disdain dripping from his tone, calling her ‘Dr Bloom’ like they hardly knew each other, when in fact they had spent so many nights curled up together, limbs entwined, anchored to each other in his bed.

The way he was looking at Alana now-- as though he could see right through her-- told her that it really had been an act. Hannibal did not have a personality complex, or a psychological disorder that would explain away his ability to manipulate her so effortlessly with no concern for the consequences: he was just an impeccably skilled liar with an attentively naive audience and an aim of mass destruction.

She wondered why somebody so talented in manipulation did not use his dead sister to tug at her heart strings. She hadn’t even known the child ever existed until she’d read about her death on Tattle Crime.

“Because it’s the truth?” Alana questioned, raising an eyebrow. “Because it cuts fresh again when you think about her? Because in spite of the all the agonising screams you’ve heard over your time ripping, it is Mischa’s that you still hear in your nightmares?”

She was crossing a dozen lines probably, this kind of razor-sharp therapy never her forte or desire. She was supposed to help, to heal what she could, not hurt. Her moral compass evaporated with each moment she spent here, so that now, only one thought burned in her mind: _I can break you, like you broke me._

If this was the low she would have to go to do so, then she would. Sometimes revenge eroded morals, but it had never bothered Hannibal or Will, so why should she care either? Being the ethical advocate had never done her any good before.

“Because you have no right to even say her name,” harsh, unrelenting tone that had the hairs on her neck and arms standing up on ends. Hannibal’s hands were balled into fists, and for the first time Alana felt actual _fear_ in his presence. He might have been bound by chains, but there was a wild darkness bubbling inside of him that she had never witnessed before-- a furious passion that had never been his driving force to kill-- and all she could think was what horror he had the potential and the capability to inflict if he were truly out of control. “Because you cannot comprehend the suffering I could have spared her had I been strong enough then. Because to taint her memory with my crimes is disgustingly disrespectful.”

It was amazing the fact his anger could make her feel twenty-three again and aiming to please her respected mentor. Amazing and disturbing, all at once, that she felt embarrassed under the weight of his disappointment, in spite of everything he had done.

Something he said in particular struck her. “Hannibal,” she said softly, “Mischa’s death was not your fault. You--you were just a child; you couldn’t have saved her.”

Her words didn’t even seemed to have registered. He narrowed his eyes, released a slow steady breath. “Do not do this. It is not indicative of the monster you would rather see me as.”

Her hands began to shake. “Don’t make this about me.”

“This _is_ about you. You did not choose to visit me out of concern for my wellbeing, I am quite sure.” He looked down at the space between them, and the acknowledgment had her taking a deep breath to remain composed. “Did you seek to reassure yourself that I am not the same man you once idolised?”

It was the opposite really-- she’d wanted proof that she hadn’t imagined all the ways he was wonderful while she’d ignored all the ways he wasn’t. She wanted reassurance that although everybody else had changed, Hannibal-- or at least the Hannibal she had known and loved-- had not.

She’d hoped he could be her constant, forgetting that she could be her own.  

“I don’t know what I wanted,” she said quietly, ducking her head. A part of her had wanted to see him just because it had been so long, because whether it was as a friend or a colleague or a lover, the loss of his presence in her life had been sorely felt. Because she’d never had anybody in her life like Hannibal, and now he’d left behind a space she knew it would be impossible to fill.

Maybe she’d been a little curious if he felt the same.

She told herself she was lucky he obviously didn’t. Indifference was safer than obsession, but that was little comfort when her hands itched to link with his, if only so she could shut her eyes and pretend this had all been a dream; that it was two years ago and they were holding hands across his dinner table, and not one dented by angry patients.

“This is why psychiatrists make terrible friends,” Hannibal observed slightly. “We ask too many difficult questions of each other.”

He was trying to make her laugh, she realised-- and she did, for a brief second before her breath caught in her stinging throat and her eyes filled with tears.

“You were the best friend I ever had,” she corrected indignantly, voice hitching horribly. Before she could stop herself, months of repressed hurt came flooding out, and a sob escaped from her lips. “You were my best _everything,_ Hannibal.” She buried her face in her hands, so he couldn’t see her cry. “Where does that leave me?”

“You are already stronger than you were two years ago,” Hannibal said evenly, but there was a shadow of the same warmth he’d once spoken to her with. It still wasn’t what she was used to, but it was enough to remind her he wasn’t all gone; not yet. “I have every faith in you continuing to grow stronger. Time heals, Alana.”

When he said her name, she felt any resolve crumble into pieces.

“What about you?” She glanced at his hands, chained to a table. The man in front of her was the same who she’d only ever seen to be gentle and kind. His hands worked magic, not murder. An irrational part of her mind told her over and over that he did not belong here. No amount of time here would heal Hannibal’s wounds-- the scars were buried too deeply, guarded too fiercely. “What will happen to you?”

She was imagining the guards shooting him dead after an altercation; picturing him still here in twenty years time, older and frailer and not able to protect himself the way he could now. It might have been exactly what he deserved, but that did not mean Alana had to be okay with it.

She shouldn’t be sympathising with him, but she did so anyway. He had been as bad as he was good-- at least in her eyes--so it stood to reason she could hate his crimes but love who he had been, or who he had pretended to be. It was her weakness; her flaw, but one she would not denounce, one she could continue to make her peace with.

Alana refused to feel guilt for having too much humanity left; for caring too much. The alternative was emptiness, and that was one step away from being dead. What was the point in surviving something terrible if you didn’t feel alive?

“Don’t worry about me,” Hannibal said, a smile preying on thin lips. “I will be quite alright. Although, if you could, I would appreciate it if you talk to dear Mr Carson about the food--”

She burst into laughter at this, covering her mouth so the guards at the door could not hear.

“--nothing fancy,” Hannibal continued, shrugging his shoulders in fairness, “just something a little more creative. I appreciate my food to be art.”   

It was horrific to be laughing about food with ‘Hannibal the Cannibal,’ but Alana could not remember the last time she had laughed, so she did, and she did so without guilt or anger at herself.

It may have been warped, but this entire situation was warped. Every relationship which stemmed from it was forever tainted. It was laugh or cry, and Alana had done more than her share of the latter.

“Will you visit again?” Hannibal asked her, after they fell into a fitful silence again and she gathered her things.

Alana paused. “Do you want me to?”

“I appreciate intelligent conversation, Dr Bloom. As you can imagine, that is something lacking in this fine establishment.” A nod toward the guards who were currently arguing passionately about a recent football game.

Alana’s lips curled. “I see.” She considered his proposition for a moment, and then she nodded. “I could come by next time,” she waved the folder. “Or you could save us the trouble and just say how many more we ought to be looking for.”

“Now, that would be telling. Where is the beauty in that?”

“I think it’s all a matter of perspective, really.” She hesitated-- wanting to touch but knowing better, so she settled for meeting his eyes and willing them to convey all the pieces of goodbye she couldn’t put together. “I’ll see you, Hannibal.”

In all honesty, she did not know for sure that she would come back but she did know that it was the equivalent to rubbing salt on a wound: in the long run, she would heal sooner and cleaner, but it would only ignite the sting for now. Despite that mind-set, she hadn’t wanted this to be the end either. She wasn’t ready either way, it seemed, but there was no longer shame in confliction now that she realized there was no right answer, no right feelings.

Nothing about this situation was black and white. A man who had murdered many brutally might be the same who only ignited with rage at the mention of the dead child who he felt he had failed to protect; a woman who ought to know better, who ought to have learned from her own pain, might still look into the devil’s eyes and finds shreds of the angel with whom she could once have spent a lifetime.  

“Goodbye, Alana.” His voice was softer than it had been before. She had her back to him, and she didn’t dare turn around, because she knew the image of him watching her leave him here would be enough to make her stay.

She walked out past the guards who were still too lost in their disagreement. She tucked the folder under her arm and took off down the corridor briskly before she could risk allowing herself to turn back. 

Jack was in the car where she’d left him, newspaper open across the steering wheel as he nodded his head to the hum of a song on the radio. She opened the door, gaining his attention immediately, and climbed into the passenger seat.

“Well?” The newspaper crackled loudly as he folded it, careless. “What happened?”

“Hannibal didn’t kill Chloe Mendez,” Alana said, handing the evidence folder back to Jack. He took it from her and tossed it into the backseat along with his newspaper.

“It took you…” he stole a glance at his watch, “an hour and a half to get that out of him?”

She forced herself not to look away. “You said yourself he’s tricky.”

Jack narrowed his eyes, before holding his hands up in surrender. “You know what? It’s none of my business. And I’d rather not know. Just...just tell me you feel better now.”

She looked down at her lap, the words, ‘ _I think I can forgive him,’_ burning on her tongue.

“I...I feel like it’s closer to being over.” She was referring to her own disjointed feelings, obviously, because everyone else had declared it over long ago. For her, though, there was still more to resolve. Today had helped; today had been a step toward all of this being a memory, a blur of pain that existed in her past.

“Well then,” Jack said, trying too hard to sound nonchalant. “At least that’s something.”

He stuck his key in the ignition, and Alana leaned back against her seat. She wound her window down slightly and let the bitter air spitting through the crack keep her awake as Jack drove her home. She closed her eyes, and for the first time in a long while, she didn’t feel anything except okay.

It wasn’t an automatic weight lifted from her heart; it did not mean that the next day she was able to drive past what once was Hannibal’s house without bursting into tears. It did not stop Jack delving deeper and deeper into unsolved cases, trying to create connections were there wasn’t any, and it did not make it any easier for Alana to stand back and watch. The visit didn’t make biting her tongue any easier when people deliberately left off the ‘Dr’ part of her name when introducing her, or make her feel like more of a fraud for RSVPing to Will’s wedding, a blessing she wasn’t ready to give.

But that night, she went home and she did not dream of Abigail’s blood on her hands. She took the dog for a walk and didn’t spend the majority of it looking over her shoulder for another predator she might not see coming. Two days later, she accepted the offer of a date from another professor at the academy, and although it was completely disastrous in every sense, she was able to come home and laugh about it, like it was the least embarrassing mistake she’d made in the last two years of her life.

It was still too far from freedom, nothing had been forgotten and it wasn’t all forgiven, but for right now, almost was good enough.

**Author's Note:**

> Written at the encouragement of Jaded1, and my very own Jade. 
> 
> I would like to dedicate this fic to both of them. I truly hope I did not disappoint.


End file.
